Spring Cleaning
An Uncanny Story for STSC Symposium: Spring Cleaning
Some impressions stuck with him. The warm Spring day. The city’s streets filled with thickly cherry-blossomed trees that smelled like the perfume aisles of Macy’s department store. The brick and marble buildings becoming cleaner and heavier the closer they walked to the National Mall. His memories really began at the National Mall.
He was six. The adults of the crowd towered over him and he could not see much beyond them. He clung to his father’s hand, who lead him carefully and determinedly toward the imposing security barriers to the temporary stadium they erected around the length of the east lawn.
The line toward the stadium was a labyrinth of metal police barricades that stretched the remainder of the Mall. Outside of the barricades, onlookers searched for ticket scalpers while opportunists shilled tourist souvenirs and event memorabilia, red and white stripes and star-spangled fields of blue being a common motif. Many items — hats, sunglasses, tee-shirts, bumper stickers — had the year in gaudy curlicued script.
𝒮𝒫𝑅𝐼𝒩𝒢 𝒞𝐿𝐸𝒜𝒩𝐼𝒩𝒢 - 𝟸𝟶𝟼𝟾.
Perhaps it was the roundness of the numerals, but the curvy script pleased him. It was right, it seemed, for him to be here on this year, when the numbers were wide and plump. Did his dad know, and that is why they came this year? He mused on whether adults enjoyed writing rounder numbers more than sharper numbers, and whether the people who made the cheap plastic souvenirs were as satisfied by the year as he was.
However, once they reached 3rd Street and the queue started bending around toward the edges of the stadium, the hawkers and their posterboards of metal buttons and noose-shaped brooches started fading away into louder and more garish picket-signs. These signs had the jagged, weighty mis-planning of his own six-year-old schoolwork, where letters were sometimes fitted drastically small to prevent running off the page. He couldn’t read all the signs waving above him, but the one thing he understood was that they were hand-made by the people carrying them, instead of by whatever place ‘out there’ full of machines and logistics that seemed to supply the hawkers.
“What are those for?” he asked, tugging his father’s arm.
“Those are protestors,” his dad said. “Not everybody agrees with Spring Cleaning.”
“Why not?” the boy asked.
“Some people are against capital punishment of any form. They see it as barbaric. Others just don’t think it’s fair. They think the ‘goat shouldn’t be punished for his accomplishments. Or hers,” his father looked around, “though it’s always worked out to be a man so far.”
“Anti-American, is what they are,” the man behind them spat. He was a large and imposing man with a huge cowboy hat studded with “Spring Cleaning - 2065” across its crown.
“I suppose it’s part of our traditions to let people speak their opinion. They don’t have to like Spring Cleaning,” his father forced an amiable smile and spoke evenly, but pulled the boy subtly closer to his side.
“Well I think they should go clamor and scream somewhere else, they’re ruining the day,” the bedazzled cowboy returned. “This your first time?”
His father nodded. “I’m lottery.”
The bedazzled cowboy grinned. “I’m jealous. I wish I could win the lottery. Shit’s expensive — excuse me,” with a glance at the boy, “but I save up for the years I can go.”
“Was that the last one?” his father pointed at the hat.
“Yeah. A great time that was. Chilly, windy day though, I nearly lost this hat. But the hangin’ was good.”
The line moved forward, requiring the momentary attention of all who stood in it. His father squeezed the boy’s hand and pointed off over the heads of various people. “That’s the Reflecting Pool over there, see it?”
He couldn’t. There were too many layers of people between him. “Yeah,” he said uncertainly.
“Want me to give him a lift for you? He can see it from up here,” said the bedazzled cowboy.
“Uh, I don’t think so,” his father said uneasily, “do you want a lift to see the Reflecting Pool?”
“No, I’m okay,” said the boy, and he felt himself as small as his words. That was the worst part about being small, you sometimes lived up to it, too.
The protestor’s placards ended against a security barricade, and were replaced by neat and authoritative signage listing rules and warnings. The chants and yells of the protestors were squelched under the unnerving music of security wand beeps and metal detectors alarms.
The protest chants hadn’t changed much of the boy’s comprehension of things. He could never really tell what adults were saying when they yelled together like that. It must be an adult thing to understand walkie-talkies, singing, and chants — he never could make a word of it himself.
He didn’t like the security signs either. They were too rigorous and neat, speaking adult words to adult concerns; worse, they looked like they were supposed to be solid and powerful, but they were clearly used, banged up and dirty. He could read most of the small words and recognized some of the larger words, but he couldn’t quite get the gist of them before his father strode forward and took him to the conveyer belt where they dumped all their belongings into baskets to be x-rayed.
“Shoes too?” his father asked the police officer across from them.
“This isn’t an airport,” the police officer scoffed. The boy didn’t like him. He was covered with heavy military looking equipment and weapons glinted from his belt, particularly a black pistol that looked as imposing as his bullet-proof vest. The boy could not see the police officer’s eyes behind his mirrored sunglasses, and the police officer kept his jaw tight and wide as if daring someone to break their hand trying to punch it. Were men with square jaws born to be cops?
“Thank you,” his father merely replied, and they crossed the metal detector without incident.
The line scattered into more of a crowd as they pushed their way through the stands. The bedazzled cowboy caught up to them.
“Let’s head this way. I know the seating that has the best view, it’s not actually right in front. People’ll be competing over there, we got in early enough to grab the real good spots.”
Somehow having gone through the security check together, the bedazzled cowboy was no longer their stranger but their acquaintance. They followed him.
“So you’re lottery, huh? They let you bring the kid?”
“Lottery selects include the option to bring a guest,” his father said, nodding down at the boy.
“Sure, but he’s a bit young, don’t you think?”
“I think it’s important for him to see what this is. He hasn’t seen it on a television or stream. They’ve barely told him anything about Spring Cleaning at school, yet. I guess I just wanted something unfiltered, that he could see with his own eyes.”
“Teach the kid some civics, sure. But yeah, a bit young.”
“I didn’t plan to win the lottery this year. I would have much preferred later.”
The bedazzled cowboy laughed. “Every time I come a lottery witness tells me it’s like jury duty, it always arrives at the worst time!”
His father, for his part, chuckled. The boy was beginning to feel more at ease.
They climbed the metal stands. The bedazzled cowboy was right — the crowd was mostly to the right, near the center of the stands, trying to sit right across from the Capitol Building looming bright and backlit from late morning light. This section wasn’t so crowded yet, but it was still getting full.
His father found a section of bench with enough space for the two of them. The bedazzled cowboy plopped down in the row in front of them next to an angular, tall man who was staring at the stage, which currently had a brass orchestra blasting the sort of clanging music the boy associated with war movies and patriotism.
The bedazzled cowboy turned, bellowing, though they were far enough away from the noise they could hear each other fine, “Just 4000 witnesses, boy, and you’re one of them. This is a very special event, you know. Many people spend a lot of money for their chance to see it in person.” Then, to the tall man beside him, “How ‘bout you, did you buy your ticket or are you lottery?”
The tall man turned his head slowly, taking in the bedazzled cowboy and then the boy and his father. “I bought it.”
“See?” the bedazzled cowboy slapped the tall man on the back, “here’s a guy who gets it! A lot of you lottery folks have your complaints but some people really sacrifice a lot of money and time to get this chance.”
“Actually, I think it’s barbaric,” said the tall man.
“What? Why’d you go and buy a ticket, then?” the bedazzled cowboy cried.
The tall man leaned forward, as if trying to peer at the stage through a microscope. “We’re called witnesses. I’m here to bear witness.”
“Yeah, but—” the bedazzled cowboy spluttered, “there are people who really wanna see this, you know. You took that opportunity from them. And, c’mon man, you feel that way you can join the protestors outside!”
The tall man worried his lips for a moment, then said, “I have to witness it myself.” Then, turning to the two of them, spoke to the boy’s father, “Are you sure he should be here? He’s very young.”
His father nodded. “I guess you could say I brought him for the same reason you came. To bear witness.” He placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“What, are you telling me you’re one of those pinko mushy-hearted types too?” the bedazzled man grunted.
“No,” his father replied measuredly. “I see both of your points-of-view. I’m not really sure this is fair. But considering where it came from, I suppose I can see how it’s just.”
“It’s neither,” said the tall man, “it’s merely scapegoating. Just like we him.”
“Him? The man they’ll bring down there is no victim. He had his chance, and yet there he is,” argued the bedazzled cowboy.
“But if it wasn’t him, it would be someone else, and it always has to be somebody. There will always be somebody,” said the tall man.
“Of course there has to be somebody. That’s the way it works, right? We can’t just, even out the wealth and income of everybody perfectly!” said the bedazzled cowboy.
“And if it were you, would you think that it was fair?”
“Ha, if only I had that problem!” the bedazzled cowboy laughed, then with a wink to the father, “A good problem to have, right?”
His father nodded, “Yeah, I suppose it would be a good problem to have.”
The band ended. The seats were now full, and though they were stacked quite vertically, the six-year-old boy still had trouble seeing to the stage through the bedazzled cowboy and the tall man.
He wanted to see, but he didn’t want to. All this adult conversation had an ominous air, something that worried and wrangled about his guts. He hated when adults talked this way, somehow saying things that sounded important and knowledgable, and yet there was always an undercurrent of something bad, a little anger, some fear, in their very manner of disagreement. He wished he could be like his dad, who seemed to keep everyone calm. He felt like if he was asked to participate in the conversation, he would start crying — and he didn’t even know what his opinion was!
His father must have seen him shifting uncomfortably around. “Do you want to sit on my lap to see better?”
“No,” the boy said, and again mentally kicked himself for sounding as small as he felt.
“Okay, then.”
“Can I?”
“You want to?”
The boy got up on his knees so he could reach his father’s ear. He did not want the tall man or the bedazzled cowboy to hear him.
“I want to see, but I’m scared,” he whispered.
“Come on, sit on my lap,” his father said, lifting him up and settling him back against his chest.
A murmur moved through the crowd. A procession marched on the stage, a tall middle-aged man and woman in clean formal wear followed by thirteen people of mixed ages in cloaks, then behind them a chained and crying man pulled by several soldiers in crisp Army service uniform.
“See that man at the front there? That’s the President,” his father whispered into his ear, leaning them forward and pointing. “He is the emcee. And those thirteen back there, with the cloaks?” The boy nodded, “That’s our justices of the Supreme Court.”
“Who is the crying man?” the boy whispered.
“That’s the scapegoat,” his father said, “that’s who we’re here for. The scapegoat is the richest man in the world. He’ll be hanged.”
The bedazzled cowboy, apparently overhearing, chuckled.
The President crossed to a many-microphoned lectern. He spoke slow and crisply, seemingly reading off a clear plastic frame that partitioned him from the crowd.
“Today,” he said, “is the Ides of March. Spring Cleaning.”
A roar of applause rippled through the crowd. The boy noticed the tall man in front of them politely clapping next to the effuse roars of the bedazzled cowboy.
“The fifteenth of March was chosen for Spring Cleaning because it is the day that Julius Caesar was assassinated. It was once a religious holiday, and then an infamous one. We have joined celebration and infamy together in this observance of justice, as we cleanse ourselves of the scapegoat.”
The President gesticulated toward the crying man to the roar of the crowd.
“But Dad,” the boy said, “What if the President is the richest man in the world?”
“That happened one year,” the bedazzled cowboy said. “It didn’t take long. President Schuman thought he could get away with being the richest man without being scapegoat if he was elected president.”
“The Speaker of the House emcees Spring Cleaning in the event of the President being scapegoat,” his father explained, back in his low murmur.
“He’s the richest man in the whole world?” the boy asked, pointing to the stage.
He could feel his father nod, “The whole world. The first few years it was just the richest person in America. Most of the wealthiest citizens fled each year. But then the people of other countries started agitating for Spring Cleanings of their own, and eventually an international agreement was set: the United States would host Spring Cleaning for the globe.”
“They’re tryna turn it into an event that’s traded off among countries, like the Olympics or something,” said the bedazzled cowboy, “but I don’t trust other countries to take it over, you know what I mean? We have a good system for it here, transparent and clean.”
“How would you know? Wealthy people have many ways of hiding their money,” said the tall man.
The bedazzled cowboy scoffed. “What, with our auditing and surveillance technology? No other country comes even close. Hell, maybe there are some rando rich people hiding away in their little bunkers in countries you’ve never heard of. I suspect America is the best at finding them and I suspect anyone who would get away from such a system wouldn’t be living much of a high life.”
“And you think making people, anyone, live in fear is just?”
“What? The fear is the point! Look at ‘im!”
The bedazzled cowboy pointed at the crying man. Nearby witnesses shushed at him, as he had raised his voice.
“The fear is the point, kid,” the bedazzled cowboy continued, lower and more direct. “If you don’t make rich people afraid of their own money, they hoard it and nobody gets any anymore.”
“There are more humane forms of redistribution,” said the tall man determinedly.
“Oh yeah, and how’d that work out before?” the bedazzled man muttered.
The tall man had no response.
“Is it true?” the boy whispered to his father, craning his neck.
“I’d say it’s true that instilling fear in wealthy people is the point, but it’s only part of the whole point of Spring Cleaning. They’re called scapegoats for a reason. This event is as much about us as witnesses as it is the man there as scapegoat.”
The boy was confused, but he had no more time to ask questions. The President had finished his speech, and a wild energy was overtaking the crowd. Witnesses leapt to their feet, forcing witnesses behind them to rise to see the stage, until everyone was standing in a wave.
His father picked him up and held him up so he could see. “Uff, you’re heavy, kid.”
The chained man was being lead to a noose currently unraveling from the stage’s scaffolding.
He was shouting. The boy strained his ear, but he always struggled to understand words that were shouted. All he could pick up was, “… giving it away! …. out of time!” and a lot of “Please!”
The scapegoat twisted wildly around, trying to engage the audience, trying to get out of the bonds. The soldiers bracketing him firmly pushed him toward the noose. At one moment he gave a wild look, and across the distances of bleachers and stage the boy could see the white of his eyes — and felt a sudden chill, as if the man were looking directly at him.
“Please!” the man yelled one last time, until he was kicked forward to under the noose, to an appreciative growl of thousands of witnesses.
Under the shadow of the noose, he stopped yelling, but his mouth worked words of panic or prayer. A roar of excitement descended from the crowd as an executioner strode onto the stage, wearing a classic hood except that his outfit seemed tailored out of the stars and stripes of the American flag.
The tall man shook his head at the sight of the executioner. However, there was no time for comment, because the executioner’s work was quick and without ceremony. He wordlessly slipped the noose around the scapegoat’s neck and kicked a trapdoor open beneath him, sending the scapegoat falling then halting with a sharp and satisfying crack.
The cheers overtook the witness stands, and briefly the boy could only see the dangling body of the scapegoat through the fluttery apertures between raised arms. Brass music blasted once again and a thundering of stomping feet shook the metal bleachers, which now seemed far less solid under the weight of passionate humanity.
“You gotta love it,” the bedazzled cowboy said as the noise rolled off. “Y’know they add an oil to the noose so that it makes that whip crack sound? Talk about showmanship!” He wiped a tear from his eye.
“That’s perverse,” the tall man muttered, but he gazed at the stage with a strange ecstasy. The President and Supreme Court Justices were shaking hands and shuffling off, while the Army men stood to either side of the stage, framing in their own way the swinging body of the scapegoat hanging dead in the center.
The boy didn’t know how to feel. He had never seen a dead body before. The way adults talked about death, he thought a dead body should produce a fear, or a chill. Maybe he was too far away to see the awfulness of death, or maybe adults only meant it about dead people they had personally known, but from this distance the scapegoat’s corpse seemed nothing but material, a factual dangling matter that no longer moved, not much different than a Halloween decoration.
“You alright, son?” his father asked, setting him back down on the bench so that they could start to pile out with the rest of the crowd.
“Yeah,” the boy said, and once again betrayed himself by sounding small.
The witnesses were more demure on their exit. On the way in they had been chatty and normal, during the event itself they had been manic and thrilled, but now the air of the stadium was contemplative.
After they exited the security area, the tall man turned to the bedazzled cowboy. “It does get to you, you know, emotionally. The shared experience of it.”
The bedazzled cowboy grinned, “You want a beer? I’m buying.”
“Sure,” the tall man said, with a hesitant look at the boy.
“We’re alright,” his father said, “I already had some plans to treat him afterward.”
“It was nice meeting you folks,” the bedazzled cowboy said, shaking father’s hand with vigor. He and the tall man walked off, talking.
“C’mon,” the father said, taking the boy by the hand and walking him across the National Mall. It was merely afternoon and the lawns were now full of tourists, picnickers, and the slurry of witnesses trying to determine where to go next.
The two crossed by some food trucks. “You want some ice cream?” the father asked, pointing at a jingling white truck.
“No,” the boy said, feeling his stomach was already too cold.
“You think you can eat anything?” the father asked with concern.
The boy looked around. In the air he could smell something deep-fried, a dingy, musty smell that matched the gunky way he felt. He followed the smell with his head to a nearby truck with a short line. “I want funnel cake.”
His father smiled. “Okay. Great choice, I love funnel cake.”
They managed to find a small spot of grass to sit down on in front of the Air and Space Museum. Once they had gotten settled, his father asked, “Is there anything you need to ask me?”
There were many things, so many that they made nothing, really. The boy shook his head. As his father took a bite of his funnel cake, the boy watched the powdered sugar of his own melt into the greasy batter below. He liked how the grease and the sugar started mixing together.
“But why, though?” the boy asked.
His father chewed thoughtfully while watching him. The boy felt nervous and picked at his funnel cake.
“Awhile ago, when I was about your age, people started attacking rich people. I guess you could say that they felt that things were unfair. The government tried to intervene, but… I remember that seemed to just make people angrier. Our family — your aunts and your Pop Pop and Nana and I — we lived pretty removed from the outbreaks of violence. I just remember my parents talking about it all the time, and their worried tones…”
He watched his son picking at his food, imagining himself in his son’s place.
“Well anyway, I guess nobody could stop it, so eventually we all decided to make an example of one per year. People calmed down pretty quickly after that.”
The boy had a horrible thought. “Will you ever be the richest person in the world?”
His father let out a half laugh, “Probably not. At any rate it’s still pretty safe to be rich. We could do this 1000 years and still not get around to every living billionaire. It’s just not a good idea to be the richest person.” He looked off. “That’s one in 12billion chance, literally.”
“Why didn’t Mom come?”
His father put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Your Mom is like the protestors. She doesn’t agree with Spring Cleaning.”
“But you do?”
“I don’t know, son. I think it’s brutal, but it may be necessary. It at least seems to work.” He pointed at the Air and Space Museum. “You see that wing being added there? The scapegoat sponsored that, in his rush to reduce his assets. Rich people have become measurably more philanthropic since Spring Cleaning started, like statistically so. Still, I can’t help thinking a bit like that gentleman who sat in front of us, the tall one? That maybe there’s a better way.”
The boy was getting confused, but he didn’t want to show his dad that he didn’t understand. He had been too small too many time today already. Everything was just adult talk that he expected he’d learn someday, and speak knowledgeably about in a crowd of other people, and some would nod their heads and others would grimace and come up with counterarguments, and it all seemed so stressful.
“What do you think?” his father asked.
“I don’t know.”
“No, really,” his father pushed, calmly. “I brought you here for you to see it yourself. What do you think?”
“It was weird,” the boy said, finally.
His father smiled. “A lot of things in society are weird. You learn to adjust to them.”
The boy could tell, at least, that that was true.
He took a bite of funnel cake. It was delicious. It was the bite by which the boy would always measure funnel cakes in the future.
This uncanny story is presented for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of raconteurs, writers, artists, philosophers, flaneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month STSC members create something around a set theme. This cycle, the theme was “Spring Cleaning.”
If you are a writer, you might consider joining us.
To experience my previous STSC Symposium submissions:
What To Do About It
Four figures facing each other: non-symmetrical, call it a rhombus, on extremely awkward stools: three-legged and wooden and loose, so low the four were forced to squat, knobby knees straining, dangerous squeaks with every move, uncertain of their respective weight. A single bulb above them. Dour-faced, di…
My Thoughts on the Gray Grave Discourse
It happens sometimes. Maybe once or twice a decade some small town frontier police find “the bodies.” I can’t recall a single incident where they are complete skeletons, it’s always pieces — skulls mixed up in a pile here, femurs scattered over acreage often publicly owned. If you were to tell me another New Mexican rural mass murderer had been found, I’d guess about 12-20 victims.
Ominous Horizon
I’m doing something different for my contribution to Soaring Twenties Symposium this month: releasing a short film I’ve been nurturing on the film festival circuit for a year and a half.
To read my previous Uncanny Stories:
Falling
Shelley jolted shrieking awake with her night terrors. Simon had become used to it as a regular part of their sleeping schedule, and he pulled her close, the heat from him warming her clammy skin. She never woke up entirely, but murmured about falling from a great height. Always falling. The one time she woke up enough to sense, she cried about falling alone.
Machine House Lovers
They met at their car accident. Outside, night, he on the ground, lacerated with windshield shards, her crumpled form crushed a few feet from him. He was still awake. He crawled over. She was still awake. She was beautiful. Her face was the only part of her unmarred and its full size. Her chest and thighs had been flattened by the tires. Her arm, barely articulate, twitched and flopped toward him. He grabbed her hand and pulled himself over her. She smiled. He held her while she fainted, keeping her warm and protected from the sky.
A Perverse Habit
My friend J.R. had this thing about ‘corrupting Christian girls.’ It started junior year of high school when he dated Marie, who went to St. Augustine’s, the Catholic school across town.
